Public Health and Syria: An Epidemiological Perspective on the Increasing Prevalence of Civil War

           The deteriorating civil war in Syria has been one of the greatest public health and humanitarian disasters in the last decade.  The UN has registered 2.9 million people as refugees, with an additional 6.5 million displaced internally, and an estimated 10.8 million in need of humanitarian assistance.^[1]  This alone would qualify it as a global emergency.  But even more horrifying is the rise of the Islamic State, which started as a collection of radical Salafist Islamist groups rebelling against Bashar Al-Assad’s rule in Syria but has grown into an entity that Al Qaeda could only have imagined.

The Challenges of Ebola Vaccination and Treatment

                Following the infection of several western aid workers in late July of this year^[1], progress towards production of viable vaccines and treatments for Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) has progressed rapidly.  This in and of itself is indicative of the human rights inequities surrounding this particular public health intervention.  Up until that point, the disease, though just as virulent and deadly, had affected only the indigenous populations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. So why has it taken 38 years for substantial progress to be made in treating and vaccinating against Ebola Virus Disease?